This section of the website is for anyone with an interest in clinical audit in HIV, AIDS and related topics. It offers:

Information about the national clinical audit programme co-ordinated by the British HIV Association (BHIVA).

Information about clinical audit more generally.

Links to relevant external sites.

Click here to find out more information about the Audit.Click here to find out more about Audit Resources.Click here for more information on the Audit and Standards Subcommittee.

Note: previous specimen questionnaires can also be accessed from this page. These are for information only and cannot be used for data submission.

HQIP Study

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership has commissioned a one year study to determine the feasibility of establishing a national HIV/STI audit programme to evaluate the quality of care and outcomes. Specifically, the study will explore the possibility of linking to existing datasets, including GUMCAD and HARS. In relation to HIV the programme would be limited to testing and partner notification, but not treatment and care. The study is being led by Medfash with both BHIVA and BASHH as partners.

BHIVA's national audit programme

Aims and objectives

To develop a rolling national HIV audit programme

To measure the level of adherence to existing guidelines

To create a baseline of data on current clinical activity to inform the further development of guidelines or future reviews of practice

To publish aggregated findings and provide confidential feedback to individual clinical centres to enable them to compare their own performance with the aggregate data.

Regional and hospital comparisons

BHIVA audit results may be stratified by characteristics of participating clinical centres (eg size, and location in or outside London), to assist participating centres in comparing their own data with an aggregate for other similar centres. However BHIVA does not publish data identifying results of individual clinical services. Because of differences in case-mix, no conclusions about standards of care can be drawn from any variations in outcome which may be found between different types of centre.

Some regional audit groups undertake their own data analysis for those centres which agree to participate in regional as well as national audit. Such analysis is the responsibility of the regional group, not BHIVA. It may enable comparisons in performance between identified hospitals within the relevant region as well as stratification of performance by centre characteristics and comparisons between the region as a whole and the national results.

Acting on the results of audit

The BHIVA executive committee will seek to secure implementation of any recommendations from the audit process which relate to national policy issues. Any recommendations which relate to the future development of national guidelines and standards will be referred to the BHIVA guidelines drafting committee.

So far as the national audit project is concerned it is the responsibility of individual clinical centres to respond to any deficiencies in their own practice identified by the audit programme.

Some regional audit groups may supplement this national activity by working with individual clinical centres to ensure they develop action plans to address any issues of sub-optimal practice. This may include additional monitoring/re-audit at the local and/or regional level.

Confidentiality

The BHIVA national clinical audit programme operates according to a strict protocol.

BHIVA does not request information from which its audit team would be able to identify individual patients - confidential review of records is the responsibility of participating departments/units.

BHIVA uses anonymous information for the purposes of the audit, in line with the following General Medical Council definition:

"Data from which the patient cannot be identified by the recipient of the information. The name, address, and full postcode must be removed together with any other information, which in conjunction with other data held by or disclosed to the recipient, could identify the patient. Unique numbers may be included only if recipients of the data do not have access to the ‘key’ to trace the identity of the patient using this number."

Information supplied by participating departments/units is separated into two categories:

Identifying details about the department/unit and staff responsible for the audit

Data to be audited.

The two types of information are linked by a numerical code. Only the second type of data is used in analysis and discussion by members of the BHIVA audit committee working closely with the audit co-ordinator, so as to avoid unnecessary identification of individual departments. Data is re-linked after analysis to enable production of individualised feedback reports to participating departments.

Children

BHIVA's audit programme only covers adults, but the Children's HIV Association conducts its own audits separately. More information can be found on the CHIVA website.